Journalistic Quotes

• Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault.

  Henry Anatole Grunwald

  Echoes, Faults, Triumph

  "WikiLeaks and the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity" by James Moore, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 3, 2010.

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• The biggest journalistic game-changer of our time has been the rise of social media and the overgrowth of faux news sources - league- and team-sponsored blogs, player tweets, fanboy sites, rumor mills - churning bits of information and speculation into a clattering fog storm. Who will cut through the drivel and whim-wham to tell us what's really going on?

  Robert Lipsyte

  Team, Cutting, Player

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• I know it's cheaper to fund an op-ed columnist than a team of reporters, but I think it confuses the mission of what these great journalistic brands are about.

  Nate Silver

  Team, Thinking, Columnists

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• The ‘I’ character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the ‘I’ of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a representation of the writer, the ‘I’ of journalism is connected to the writer only in a tenuous way—the way, say, that Superman is connected to Clark Kent. The journalistic ‘I’ is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life.

  Janet Malcolm

  Character, Ideas, Greek

  "The Journalist and the Murderer". Book by Janet Malcolm, March 20, 1989.

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• Here we are in the century of information, that is to say the unformed. Every kind of literature will be journalistic, with a science for ballast.

  Julien Torma

  Literature, Information, Kind

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• Hunter and I never got proper journalistic accreditation to go anywhere. Nobody was giving us passes to go in here or there. We always had to somehow talk our way in.

  Ralph Steadman

  Giving, Hunters, Way

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• And Robert Lowell, of course - in his poems, we're not located in his actual life. We're located more in the externals, in the journalistic facts of his life.

  Mark Strand

  True Life, Facts, Courses

  "In The Presence Of America: A Conversation With Mark Strand". Interview with Katharine Coles, weberstudies.weber.edu. 1992.

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• I think it's very healthy to use journalistic and legal techniques to investigate the evidence for and against Christianity and other faith systems.

  Lee Strobel

  Thinking, Healthy, Technique

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• I am thrilled to become International Vogue Editor at Condé Nast International, which has a real commitment to journalistic excellence, and to have the opportunity to write for a wider global audience through the Vogue websites.

  Suzy Menkes

  Real, Writing, Commitment

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• I can't make something 'useful' to me in a writing sense for a very long time. I don't have any journalistic instinct. And I do keep a journal, but it's neither very revealing nor fruitful for work. Stuff just bubbles up from the swamp later.

  Tim Winton

  Writing, Long, Swamps

  Source: www.readings.com.au

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• Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.

  William Safire

  Taken, Jargon, Columnists

  "How to Read a Column" by William Safire, www.nytimes.com. January 24, 2005.

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• Indeed in the full flush of journalistic passion and conviction I once told an interviewer that of course I would never get married. And I most definitely would never have children.

  Christiane Amanpour

  Children, Passion, Married

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• New York waiters, probably the surliest in the Western world . . . are better images of their city than that journalistic favorite the taxi driver.

  Alan Brien

  New York, Food, Cities

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• Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.

  James Frey

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story.

  Randy Shilts

  Stories, Answers, Telling The Truth

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• I have no interest in non-fiction. I don't read it and don't watch it and don't write it, other than a little journalistic column.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Writing, Watches, Fiction

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• So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Humility, Men, Long

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• Somewhere in the dim recesses of the journalistic soul lies the horrible suspicion: This is really a pretty shallow and maybe unseemly way for a grownup to make a living.

  Andrew Ferguson

  Lying, Soul, Way

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• Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

  Janet Malcolm

  Way, Fidelity, Characteristics

  Janet Malcolm (2011). “The Journalist And The Murderer”, p.146, Granta Books

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• Lack of understanding, along with outright anti-Christian prejudice, leads to journalistic amazement or horror at the supposed self-deception of those who do see a spiritual realm.

  Marvin Olasky

  Christian, Spiritual, Religious

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• Breezy journalistic sentences about wealthy white people unaware that other human beings are real became the rubber stamp product of the elite MFA programs.

  Sarah Schulman

  Real, White, People

  Sarah Schulman (2012). “The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination”, p.104, Univ of California Press

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• The writing of headline is one of the great journalistic arts. They either conceal or reveal am interest

  Claude C. Hopkins

  Art, Writing, Headlines

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• Aping urbanity,
  Oozing with vanity,
  Plump as a manatee,
  Faking humanity,
  Intellectual inanity,
  Journalistic calamity,
  Fox Noise insanity,
  You're a profanity,
  Hannity.

  John Cleese

  Vanity, Insanity, Humanity

  "Ode to Sean Hannity". Poem by John Cleese, www.dailykos.com.

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• See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

  John Thomas Sladek

  Writing, Fiction, Research

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• I think there's a future where the Web and print coexist and they each do things uniquely and complement each other, and we have what could be the ultimate and best-yet array of journalistic venues.

  Dave Eggers

  Thinking, Print, Coexist

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